Tag Archives: Schmitt

One conclusion and one only rises from those lectures: if you have to devote your life to a religion or to an ideology, most probably the only one that makes sense nowadays is environmentalism. Peoples and their leaders tried many times to take power, and power seems to be the only real pattern in human history. Up to now: if the prospect is not to have a planet to rule anymore, I guess that any power-led ideology (including religions) is pretty useless…

Of course, we are going to show our "best" before environmentalism becomes the new order... (Image taken from "The Economist")

This should sound pretty banal. But if you reconnect the concept of “power” to Carl Schmitt writings, I guess that the whole affirmation becomes more interesting.

In the name of God, let's see if the wheel of fortune turns on your side today...

Moreover, bearing in mind European Christendom history (from the creation of the papacy, thought the schism, the crusades, up to the birth of protestantism, to finish with the continuos interference of the Vatican in secular power till in recent times) or Communism, you may get an amazing picture of what in the end hierarchies, principles and values of those religious/ideological bodies exist for: manage power on Earth.

Ergo, if you want to be a real progressive intellectual, disembed the discussion around power from the classical arena – made of armies and troops, geopolitics and economical strength, ethnical clashes and historical disputes -and embed it in a new field: ecology.

I am afraid that this might indeed be the future. I say I am afraid because it would be a lifelongexaltingexperience being involved, as a youth interested in politics, in a new wave of self-assuring, holistic, self-referential, calming and reassuringbig political ideologies and/or religious revival. But I think this is not going to happen, at least in Western countries.

So, in order to tackle the issue we are indeed facing (socio-economical on top), a brand new approach has to be found. At this point a bell rings in my mind: Serge Latouche‘s degrowth theory. Too easy-breeezy to be even considered as an feasible option…
We’d better sit down and find a better solution.